Thursday, March 27, 2008

Q: Name a well known historical figure with a one-word six-letter name. The first and fourth letters are the same, the second and fifth letters are the same, and the third letter is one letter before the sixth, alphabetically. Who is it?

I wonder if this is a popular baby name? Probably not, but if someone can get away with having just one name, they must be pretty great.

Friday, March 21, 2008

In the American game of "eight-ball" there are 15 numbered balls (1 through 15). At the beginning of the game, these balls are racked into a triangular pattern as shown.

The challenge this week is to place the numbers 1 through 15 into an upside-down triangle pattern such that each number is the result of *subtracting* the two numbers above it. To eliminate mirrored answers, provide a solution where the numbers at the three points of the triangle are in ascending order going clockwise.

P.S. When taking the difference, always use the absolute value. Feel free to add a comment with your answer, along with how you solved it.

Q: Using the middle row of letters on a keyboard, name something that has eight stars. Hint: The answer is spelled in 10 letters.

Let's see there were 7 castaways on Gilligan's Island, so that was 7 stars perhaps. Or on the Brady Bunch there were Mike and Carol and 6 kids but Alice made 9 stars. Perhaps I'm thinking of the wrong type of stars. What a folly!

Edit: My clue was "folly" as in Seward's Folly. If you want to see more clues, check out the comments. I liked the references to "Juneau" and "Alaska" as well as the hints for "flag".

Friday, March 14, 2008

A certain number of faces of a large wooden cube are stained. Then the block is divided into equal-sized smaller cubes. Counting we find that there are exactly 45 smaller cubes that are unstained. How many faces of the big cube were originally stained?

Feel free to add a comment with your answer, along with how you solved it.